Morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven [Conn.]) 1848-1894, 1887-10-15

distance above the surface to enter or clear
the we'll. The brine as it flows from these
wells is as clear as the purest crystal, and
bitter salt-the bitter being due to the pres
ence of bromide of sodium. The water is
delivered into the 'cisterns," which are huge
boxes built upon piles twenty feet above
ground, SO that the brine will flow from them
into the "settlers" at lower level. The
brine when exposed to the air becomes rusty
owing to the presence of iron. 1t is treated
to lime-wash, which separates the iron and
precipitates it. The water then becomes
permanently clear. From the cisterns, which
are outside, it Is drawn into the settlers, in
side the ''salt block" In the settlers it
comes in contact with hot steam-pipes that
raise Its temperature to one hundred and
seventy-fve degrees Fahrenheit. In twenty
four hours evaporation has reduced the guam
tity of brine nearly to the psint of satura-
ton. Then it is drawn into the ''grainers,"
where other pipes raise the temperature to
one hundred and eighty-fve degrees. Evap-
grafton is hastened here, and as the last yes
tige of water rises in vapor from the chic
rine and sodium particles, these two elements
embrace, materialize as salt-crystals and sink
to the bottom, settled for life, or until some
cruel fate shakes them over a porterhouse
steak and tears them asunder again. In
twenty flour hours the brine of the settlers is
nearly all converted into salt. But the bro
mine still remains, and to prevent making
bitter salt the brine is never allowed to crys-
tallize to thu bottom. Consequently the salt
has to be lifted every morning out of these
settlers, where the brine stands at tempera-
ture of one hundred and eighty-fve degrees
Fahrenheit.
Lifting the salt is the unique part of the
work. A gang of eight men will take care
of the salt for sixty thousand barrel block
but there is no loa6ng or shrinking. Each
man has his stent, and if he can't do it on
time he must go. Everyone is naked to the
waist. On the limbs are old pants or draw
ers, red being the favorite color; on the feet
old shoes, or boots with the legs cut off.
Each man has hoe and shovel, and with
one or the other he scrapes or shovels in the
hot steam, with the perspiration standing in
great beads upon face and body or trickling
downward in tiny streams. But this is
healthful work. The men never suffer from
colds, although they go out of these ovens
into the cold winter atmosphere.
The dimensions of sixty Thousand bar
rel block, with some idea of its fit-out, may
be of interest. The block is two hundred
and eight feet by ninety, forty feet high I'M
der the ridge pole or open ventilator, and six
teen feet high in the posts. It contains two
settlers, each one hundred and forty feet
long, nine feet wide and four feet deep. It
has four grainers each one hundred and nifty
feet long, ten feet wide and eighteen inches
deep. To heat settlers and grainers there are
three thousand seven hundred and forty-four
feet of four-ineh galvanized pipe, and other
pipes and connections make the total nine
| thousand feet. There are fourteen bins, a
packing room and a shed for the storage of
| salt two hundred and thirty by one hundred
and fifty feet. The cost of such plant, in
Guiding boilers and steam pumps, is forty
| thousand dollars. To run it requires in all
| twenty-five men-coopers, teamsters, fire.
men and salt handlers-whose wages will av-
| erage one dollar and seventy-fve cents per
| day The wear and tear of the machinery is
| considerable; pipes rust out; wells get foul
and have to be torpedoed; and it must be
| apparent that, with salt selling at fifty, six
| ty or even seventy cents per barrel, the bar
l rel costing twenty cents, our folks are not
| becoming millionaires fast enough to make
| them dizzy.
| The fact is, when salt went down to fifty
one cents last spring, with every shed on the
| Saginaw full, it looked bilious for time
| If the salt men could only shove the tariff uI
l to thirty or forty cents hundred pounds
and keep out the foreign product altogether
| they would then be able to bounce prices up
| one dollar barrel and make lots of money
| for few years. As it is there is more salt
than market, and it has been only by pool
! ing their interests that the Michigan manu-
facturers have been able to save themselves
from great disaster this year. They are all G
unit now, and as such have been able to make
terms in the other saIt-producing districts in
| the union that enable all to put the price up
1t jumped suddenly from ifty-one to seventy
cents, and stands now at seventy-five cents
per barrel.